Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right. Second BDE of the week,

0:05 talking Chevron deference today. You want to level set us? You want me to go ahead and I'll fill in. I actually thought you were going to level set up. So I'll do it. I didn't actually think

0:17 you'd take me up on that. So yeah, all the discussion around Chevron deference, we missed the heart of that in our being away in our travels is around a Supreme Court rule And I'm going on June the

0:32 28th, that effectively overturned what is known, has come to be known since 1984 in a Reagan administration era case as the Chevron deference. And what essentially that means is the courts in

0:49 deciding or interpreting matters

0:54 where an administrative agency is tasked with enforcing those laws where Congress has left ambiguity or is silent on critical specific interpretation facts has deferred automatically in the 1984 case,

1:14 the Chevron deference gives automatic deference to the expertise of the administrative agency which is under the executive branch per view for interpretation of those laws So, just one thing I'd kind

1:30 of add to that, it makes sense that we write a law, we want X, Y, and Z, and we hand it to the executive branch and the agency says, Okay, I gotta figure out how to do this. You know, I mean,

1:48 that makes sense. That's not nefarious in any way, shape, or form. And I think what Chevron basically did is If the agency says we do X, Y, and Z, when we go to court, deference is given to

2:03 the agency for coming up with X, Y, and Z, and it was a two-pronged test. It was like, did Congress speak directly about this? If they didn't, deference to the agency, assuming the agency's

2:17 answer, and I think they called it, was a permissible construction of the law. Right, in past a reasonableness and consistency test. Yeah And that aspect of it goes all the way back to 1944,

2:32 something called the Skidmore case, where the

2:39 tenants of consistency and reasonableness over time, recognizing that the administrative agencies are, not only the de facto experts in whatever area of regulation in

2:54 applying the specific meaning of those laws, but they have the wherewithal to just by mere fact of they are, they are the experts in those particular areas. And we were talking before we got

3:09 started here about what's happened, for example, with

3:14 the EPA and in terms of its budget. I don't know if you wanted to get to that at this point, but. You know, one of the things I think you and I did really well yesterday on BDE, if like I can say

3:24 that not sent any more narcissistic than I already am, but yesterday we talked about two really bad things. I mean, we talked about center point, we talked about the assassination attempt on Trump.

3:40 And we did both of those through the lens of do not attribute malice to what can be explained by incompetence, even though it was really hard to do that. You know, let me throw a lens out talking

3:58 about this more. Let me throw a lens out and I'm gonna talk Sally Yates. So Sally Yates, my mother's the most wonderful person on the planet. She had four boys. And I don't know if she figured

4:09 out early on that she was gonna have to be judged during an executioner 24 hours a day and she didn't wanna do it. Or I don't know, she grew up an only child. Or I don't know if this was just the

4:21 wisdom of Sally But one of the things Mom did in every situation was,

4:30 Mom, Chuck's getting the last Snickers bar. Chuck, you cut the Snickers bar in half. Kenny gets first pick of one piece. You know, Mom, I don't wanna eat there, whatever. Chuck chooses on

4:42 Monday night. Jay chooses on Tuesday night. And she constantly put in place rules that forced us participants, the four boys, work it out amongst ourselves. And we all bought into the rules

4:58 enough so that even though we lost,

5:03 you kind of knew, well, that was just the rule. And there was always something you would get later. And it kind of forced you to, and the reason I bring this up, 'cause when we start talking

5:12 about Chevron deference and it being overturned in the Loper case is this is rules to the game type stuff and what I worry about when we talk politics and both sides do this, I'll give a little

5:31 editorial comment and say I think the liberal side does it more, but conservatives do it too is we want our outcome and we don't care how we get there as opposed to worrying about the process and how

5:42 it goes. 'Cause I mean, you were telling me this morning and I didn't even realize it, the original Chevron case, even though it was a liberal court that decided it is, The Reagan administration

5:53 was using it to de-regulate. And that was a case that involved Chevron versus the Natural Resources Defense Council and it's at the time application or enforcement of the Clean Air Act of 1977. And

6:13 I don't remember all the particulars of the dispute but that was a ruling in favor of Chevron. And I think people look at it, particularly in today's environment in the realm of energy politics,

6:30 well, Chevron deference, they kind of get their way. Really what it does is defers to automatically defers the way I think about it, the interpretation to the administrative agency which is

6:46 clearly

6:49 under the executive umbrella and starts to get into the fundamentals of separation of powers.

6:58 And that's kind of a walkish discussion, a constitutional walkish discussion for another time and neither of us are attorneys.

7:08 But the

7:13 notion that there's not a political pendulum, if you will, with changing administrations over time that it only favors one point of view and limits what was here to for a pretty broad

7:30 seating of interpretive powers to administrative agencies or more fundamentally the executive branch,

7:39 there is a political dynamic on both sides, depending on where we are in the political history and the administrative political tilt of a particular administration.

7:56 I forget when the law was put in place, so I'll make up a number. It was, I think, the late 1800s. 'Cause the way the United States used to work is a party, you know, got elected president and

8:10 they immediately fired everybody that worked for the federal government in the executive branch and they replaced it with their folks. It's called patronage, right? And that went back and forth.

8:20 And at some point, a law was put in place that said, and there's probably some truth to this being, at least a partially good thing that, now we need to have stability there. We need to have

8:31 people work for the EPA for 10 and 15 and 20 years and not be held to the whims of politicians. So they put a law in place that said, hey, you can't just fire civil servants without, you know,

8:43 due cause, all that sort of stuff. But I will say this, back in the early '80s and up to that point.

8:54 When you got a new administration and you had a new secretary of pick any of the agencies, commerce, whatever, and you got down and you appointed the head of the EPA, they could do something in

9:08 the way of shifting the barge. It was huge. And so when raking came in, this court case you were talking about, it actually had to do with one of

9:22 the clean air clean water acts and they were talking about a source of pollution. And the EPA defined the source as, there's a hole right there and it's leaking. And the Reagan administration that

9:37 wanted to come in and be more pro-business, less regulation, the EPA, they had them redefine a source as an entire plant So you could be leaking methane over here. at the plant, but if you had

9:54 some mitigation over here and the whole plant was net zero, it got through. So industry was able to use that to get more stuff done. So both sides are using this. I think what has happened over

10:12 time is clearly bureaucracies have gotten bigger. It feels like they've gotten more entrenched and have more distance from political views that they don't like. I mean, we're seeing this today. I

10:29 mean, we were partially talking about it yesterday. And so in the Loper decision that just happened here about a month ago, basically the court came back and said, hey, we're not going to

10:48 immediately defer to the agency, to the agency. We will give some credence to them, but hey, we're the judges. We're gonna make an independent assessment of this. We're gonna look at the

10:59 evidence of both sides. And the liberals have gone nuts over that because I feel like they think they're losing the bureaucracy and when they were winning right now. Well, that's been the feedback

11:12 from Twitter and political types. There's way more

11:19 color of accusations of activism, no matter whether we're talking about the Supreme Court or administrative agencies. And so that is a political dynamic that has

11:31 been elevated in decisions and discussions and debates like this. So

11:39 I think the case that the Supreme Court ruled on here recently

11:46 is a good example of the way I think about it of the way I think about it. a somewhat unilateral decision in this case, the National Marine Fisheries

12:00 Agency. And it was all about even knew we had one of those in the

12:07 government that keep going. We saw him in the Valdez. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. This was a commercial hearing is a commercial hearing phishing operation in New England. And basically the

12:21 issue, the crux issue is the fact that the interpretation that the NMFA

12:32 had imposed upon commercial phishing operators was they were liable or responsible for paying the wages or the cost of having on board federal monitors,

12:48 which you know the number was. 700 a day, and I can tell you from smaller commercial fishery experience and being around commercial fishermen, again, in Valdez, the

13:04 risks and margin on that business is about akin to small family farms and the cost burden. So this was a material issue, I think the court decided of maybe a bit outside of the reasonable standard.

13:23 And so thus overturned the rote deference that Chevron set up, and

13:33 like everything else, there are no kind of absolutes, it won't be this way going forward. It's much grayer in terms of how the agencies and the plaintiffs are going to deal with this, But it does

13:46 force the case making.

13:51 back to the judiciary

13:54 to make a ruling on with respect to the reasonableness consistency of the interpretation that the agency is now forced to work harder, at least in the Hill article. And there was a Hill article that

14:08 was out yesterday that has a discussion and it's an opinion piece, but it brings up a few historical precedents and some current things that are going on with other agencies, administrative agencies

14:21 as well as there's not going to be kind of a black and white cessation of the agencies having interpretive influence. They're just gonna have to work harder to prove it in court. Yeah, and so I

14:35 think the

14:38 politics today is the Supreme Court, Lean's conservative, therefore any power going to the court today is viewed as bad as liberals And so that's the - kind of the reaction you're seeing. And I

14:54 wanna jump into that Hill article in just a second, but I've found a couple of things interesting. Starry, decisive, the legal theory of once something's decided, it becomes precedent. It's

15:07 really important to our culture and our legal system because at the end of the day, consistency of rules is really important. John Roberts who wrote the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts

15:21 actually said, address that. And he said, it's been unworkable. He goes, every decision leads to different things. And so he said, that's why they were comfortable overturning it.

15:39 The majority opinion actually goes to that point right there of, hey, this is unworkable, blah, blah, blah. it was Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion that actually went to the separation of

15:55 powers document. That said - Of course. Yeah, exactly. That said, hey, Congress, if you wanna charge700 an hour to monitor this, say it, you have a pen, go vote for it.

16:08 Yeah, and a more fundamental, I think, objective of that opinion and the way it was worded is really a message to Congress, be more specific and write clear laws. Yeah. So remove as much

16:23 ambiguity as you can. Now they can't be written for every context in which there's an interpretation by an agency and a dispute that arises from that.

16:34 But it is a pretty strong message whether we'll ever get to that

16:42 much clear legislative model remains to be seen.

16:49 You know, this just happened to be a case where relatively small business owners were faced with, you know, a pretty onerous consequence of an interpretation that was under Chevron, pretty much

17:05 the unilateral purview of the agency itself. So let's go back to Sally Yates real quick, and then I want to get back to the article you read,

17:17 Sally Yates knew that in every conflict, one person would be disappointed. And so if the rules were fair and consistent, you accepted it and moved on better. I think what we've seen under Chevron

17:32 listening to feedback is I got charged700 a day for this I'm corrupting my business, I try to deal with the agency, they have full power. I can't do anything there. I go to court. The court has

17:54 no ability except to defer back to the agency. And oh, by the way, all the bureaucrats that I'm dealing with are in effect employees for life that don't answer to anyone. They certainly weren't

18:08 elected. They weren't appointed by the current president reflecting voting or anything. And so you had a sense that this just isn't fair. I have no recourse up against my government. And I hate

18:26 lawsuits. I hate that we adjudicate as much of the stuff as we do. And as much as, you know, our judicial system is a mess. It's part expensive, burdensome and all that. At least you have a

18:42 trial with the judge. And then you have an appeals court.

18:49 and beyond an appeals court, you do have a Supreme Court. You at least have some sort of process that if you lose, you feel like you had a shot. 'Cause what under the Chevron deference standard,

19:03 it felt a lot like when the NFL commissioner finds you and you appeal to the commissioner. Right, yeah. So, but I think, you know, what it does is, bring more equilibrium back to the separation

19:20 and balance of powers among the three branches is there Because. government of a

19:28 political motivation and temptation to use the administrative agencies for an agenda and the

19:39 process while messy and cumbersome,

19:43 forces putting a finer point. on the debate, and as the Hill article pointed out, the agencies are going to have to work harder to make an effective case. And so the ball's back in their court to

20:01 do that. Now, that doesn't mean the court can't rely on things like Skidmore, which means if there is precedent in the agency's interpretation and decision-making, then there will be some

20:18 continued softer deference, if you will, but I think it

20:25 forces a sharper focus on making sure that those interpretations are proven reasonable and not outside the bounds of what deference was originally intended to do. I mean, from a practical standpoint,

20:40 these very specific issues, regulatory issues, by and large have to rely on the expertise of the lifetime bureaucrats experts that you previously discussed. 'Cause that's the other side of this and

20:53 potentially what five years from now we'll be bitching about is we had somebody that was an undergrad political science major who then went to law school, who then clerked for a judge, who then

21:08 practiced, you know, make it up, family law for five years, got appointed to the bench, is sitting there deciding how arsenic levels in an electric plant. That's the

21:24 flip side is, you know, wouldn't we rather have the EPA expert who's been there? We just, the problem with that goes back to the saying of, you know, power crops, absolute power crops,

21:38 absolutely, so. So this isn't just an energy issue, but it's interesting that

21:47 Or what are the implications for energy and front and center in our discussions on regular BDE have been about the big corporate mergers, most notably Pioneer Exxon, and even more specifically than

22:02 that, what the FTC did with respect to the consent order and the,

22:11 I guess, removal of Scott Sheffield from Canada to see for the board Well, we'll approve your deal if Scott's not on the board. Right, and so there was

22:21 not specifically to this case, but part of the article, and I'd written in the notes, FTC, Commission Chair, Lena Hidalgoats, Lena Kahn,

22:31 Lena Hidalgoes, a bit more front of mind, given what's happened over the last week. Harris County Judge, yeah.

22:38 She recently admitted that her agency was waging costly legal challenges against high-profile corporate mergers,

22:46 those are likely to fail. And really the objective here is, and not only in this case, look, Congress changed the law.

22:58 And so there's a de facto lobbying by the administrative agency to either remove the ambiguities or create a new law that is more politically aligned with our objectives And so

23:17 that's not going to stop. Yeah. Now, that introduces more messy and costly litigation. And as we were talking about it before the show as well, I can kind of see the Exxon response to the

23:33 activist proxy resolution challenges, the suit that they engaged or filed in Fort Worth against the two activist hedge funds as

23:46 Exxon saying, this is my read or conclusion, Exxon saying, look, this is an example of the SEC aggressively interpreting something that has resulted in repeat nuisances in the form of kind of

23:55 redundant proxies that have proven over a

24:09 period of years to actually receive declining support And companies have to dedicate quite a bit of time and resources to defending those actions. So

24:24 is this putting the interpretation, in this case, back in squarely in the judiciary and somewhat of a first derivative test of the Chevron doctrine, if that makes sense? Yeah, no, I think that

24:39 makes perfect sense You know, there's a side of the world that says, we need a crusader like, FTC chairman to defend the small person and want him to be a rabble rouser. And then there's another

24:55 view of it is, I'm a spoiled kid, I'm going to take my marbles and go home. And, and yeah, no, it's, it's not something that's going to end soon. I mean, prior to things like FDA and consumer

25:13 product safety and all the OSHA, all those things, you read about really the time period where Teddy Roosevelt was coming on the scene as the Progressive Republican. There's a lot of foundational

25:26 aspects that have made the health well being in safety of American citizens a lot better because these regulatory frameworks were established. Right. And these mechanisms. So coke used to have

25:38 cocaine in it. Right. Smoking used to be recommended by four out five doctors. I mean, you know, we, we definitely had it. All right. So what does it mean for energy?

25:50 That's going to be interesting. What it means for for for energy, I think, you know, kind of looking into the crystal ball. Are the energy companies going to have a little bit of a shot of fair

26:08 playing field, if you will, when dealing with the EPA and other places, my gut kind of says, yes But it's going to be, it's not actually going to benefit the small entrepreneur. Like we think it

26:22 should, it's going to benefit the bigger companies that can, hey, let's take this all the way to the Supreme Court. I'll take it down to a specific with the emergence and somewhat mushrooming of

26:36 things like net zero.

26:39 Phase one, two and right or scope one, two and three And you and I both know, and we've talked about it.

26:48 that introduces a compounding level of ambiguity because there's not a lot of absolute reliable data. And how do you set the boundary conditions on complying with future regulation and legislation,

27:03 vis-a-vis things like net zero

27:09 emissions reduction and

27:13 other things that are more measurable will be easy But if it's left to somewhat politicized administrative agency, I don't care which side in which administration in the future, these things are

27:28 gonna have to be litigated where there are

27:31 precedents that can be set that will result in,

27:37 I think, unpredictable, but we know much greater cost and inefficiencies in the system. Right. For both businesses and the budget that the taxpayers fund for these administrative agencies, we're

27:51 talking about the EPA over the last 20 years, the budget's gone from what? What to what? It was, I think it was three, seven to 10 to, yeah, billion over 20, you know. years

28:06 And employees are up like 16 X, you know, the growth of, you know, it's interesting you say that 'cause everything you just said about net zero is gonna apply to AI as well. You know, you're

28:21 gonna have what's permissible, what's appropriate copyright, what's not, who owns what. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to watch the, you know, at the end of

28:37 the day, the founding fathers, although I think they'd be mortified by the federal government today. if they were alive, but at the end of the day, I mean, the only reason the federal government

28:50 is the size it is today, and that we have the freedoms we retain in the United States is because of the checks and balances. So I usually err on the side of anything that has the government fighting

29:04 among itself is probably pretty good and anything because absolutely power. There was one great moment. So my favorite teacher I've ever had in my life was Gilbert Cuthbertson, Doc C, my political

29:15 science professor at Rice. He taught us constitutional law. And I'll change the name to protect the innocent. I take con law. I wind up with tied with Mike Bossy for the highest grade in the class.

29:32 And we go in and we're picking up our finals. And I made a 98 on it and so did Mike Bossy And Doc was deaf, so he kind of talked funny. I think the being deaf was selective. He chose to hear

29:46 certain things he chose not to. So anyway, Doctrine and All Right. Mike, I'm gonna understand how Chuck makes a 98 'cause he came to every class. He bought all the books. He came to the

29:60 tutorials and Chuck and I talked to Con Law all the time at lunch. I get that. Mike, you didn't show up for any class You didn't even buy the books and read them. You and I have never talked about

30:15 this yet. You made a 98 and Chuck made a 98. Please explain. And Mike Pussy just looked Doc in the eye and said, Doc, it's pretty easy. It's constitutional law. The feds always win. And walked

30:28 off and Doc goes, Damn it, he's right. And so Doc, after that coined the bossy rule of constitutional law, feds always win. So real quick, while we're on the feds, Big announcement last night.

30:42 Trump has chosen JD Vance, the freshman senator, what, three months, four months in or six months in? From Ohio. From Ohio as his running mate. First millennial. Yeah, 39

31:19 years old. On a presidential ticket. His background, if you haven't read his life story to this point or prior to all of his success in becoming a United States Marine Ohio State and then

31:19 ultimately getting through Yale Law School, Hillbilly Elegy. It's one of the most harrowing, dysfunctional,

31:26 bringing stories that you can imagine. There's a movie that was out two or three years ago, Hillbilly Elegy

31:36 I find,

31:38 in the cliche analysis, The book is way better than the movie. I found it to be a bit of a chaotic artistic mess, right? Kind of like my comparison of Bohemian Rhapsody, Good versus Rocket Man,

31:52 really, really just a,

31:55 just an artistic mess.

32:02 I got kind of the first inclination to read the book This was back in 2015 or 2016 in the person who urged us all to read it was Bobby Tudor. And this was right around the emergence of the Trump

32:18 campaign, he, Vance is from

32:23 the Rust Belt and I believe his Youngstown, Ohio. And, you know, he had a severely drug-addicted mother and was essentially raised by a kind of nail stuff grandmother. But all of the dysfunction

32:43 is at almost caricature levels in what he went through as a child in developing in obviously a much poorer economic circumstance than any of us has experienced. But it is an American bootstrap

33:02 success story.

33:05 I was a little surprised by the choice It didn't because he's somewhat famously being a challenge on the fact that he is in the recent past and basically

33:20 making comments that would indicate he's a quote unquote, never Trumper. He called Trump Hitler. Yeah, I mean, he did, you know. And if we think back to the presidential debates from 2020 where

33:35 Kamala was still in the race, some of the things she said about Joe Biden, it's it's politically expedient in the moment, right? And so with that cynical view, I do think it's

33:49 an interesting choice in that

33:52 if you could

33:55 draw a boundary line around Trump's base, that's JD Vance's heritage. Yeah. But he's also, I think, a resounding success story of coming out of those circumstances and all the things that he's

34:11 done in a short 39 years to overcome. 'Cause I mean, there's also a military career in there. Didn't he serve in the Marines in the Marines and didn't he see combat? Yes, so combat and then there

34:25 was a tech career, right? Right, he was

34:32 originally Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel and that peer group He, they. ultimately funded his own VC firm to focus on technology investments outside of Silicon Valley. Yeah. So I would take that as

34:50 more Midwest and kind of manufacturing related. But I don't remember all the details around that. But Bloomberg Green was out this morning. It's one of their series of newsletters that are free

35:02 that are out this morning. They've already labeled him a quote unquote climate denier Well, keep in

35:07 mind, he is one of the two senators from Ohio, which is

35:14 home to the Utica Point Pleasant and Marcellus. And so there is

35:22 a - I think

35:24 we have a climate problem comments that he made back in 2020 are being used as a basis to really paint him as a flip flapper He's

35:35 a young guy, like everyone else, you can adjust. your worldview based upon experiences and information. But - I think, quite frankly, jobs. Right. Yeah. This is going to be an interesting

35:49 dynamic as they hit the post-convention campaign trail and start to see what some of the slings and arrows are throwing their way. So interesting thing for me is - and

36:04 if you look at kind of narratives out there, Trump doesn't want someone to show him up. Vance could show him up. Vance, whether you like him or don't like him, incredibly articulate and smart.

36:20 Whether you agree or disagree, he is. So that was interesting. Doesn't feel like it increases the reach. There's no Nikki Haley reach out to the 20 that didn't vote for me, Tim Scott, reach out

36:38 to a group. that historically I've gotten 10 of the vote of and hope to get. So it doesn't appear base broadening in any way, shape or form. It feels like he potentially chose his successor. I

36:55 mean, he went with youth. That being said, and again, I don't care if you like Trump or hate Trump. We all, look, he is as shrewd a politician as we've seen I mean, I think, I think his

37:10 instincts rival Bill Clinton. Again, like Clinton, hate Clinton. Clinton's the best politician we've had. He just is. And I think Trump has equal level instincts. And I think what Trump is

37:25 doing with this is he's basically saying, can I peel off Silicon Valley a little bit? I got a tech guy. He's young. He's consistent with my values. love 'em or hate 'em. He's consistent with me

37:42 when it, particularly when it comes to protectionism, bring jobs home, manufacturing. And I'm wondering if they're just gonna throw Vance in basically the Midwest. And he's just gonna be doing

37:57 the loop. I don't know that that's gonna be as effective as it sounds. Because if you look at his senatorial race, he won by six points and the Republican governor divine won by 25 points. Now,

38:12 the vine didn't have his challenging race and there's some mitigating circumstances there. So

38:19 it was definitely a pick that said, hey, base, this is your guy. It was, hey, this guy's gonna be my heir apparent. Actually shows something that people don't think Trump has I called him

38:33 Hitler four years ago and Trump's forgiven him. you know,

38:39 and the like, it doesn't expand the base. But I think Trump's saying, I'm winning anyway, and I'm just setting this up so that it lasts beyond me. I do think his Yale Law pedigree and his Silicon

38:53 Valley history certainly are impactful with coastal money and the coastal heavyweights. May not at all be related, but I think I saw something this morning where Elon has committed to funding or

39:11 donating 45 million a month to Trump's Super PAC. It's like 180 million dollars total. So I guess that covers the span of the campaign going forward until November. So, it's interesting, I kind

39:28 of thought after the events of this weekend, the Vek might be the really bombastic choice, if you will But.

39:39 you know, very different backgrounds between Vivek and JD Vance, but in terms of their professional path and success, you know, there are a lot of similarities there. Both are lawyers, both

39:50 were involved in technology. One is a VC, the other is a biotech entrepreneur. One other point on this is,

39:60 you know, and I think it's horrible that Biden sent out an attack tweet tweet on JD Vance quicker than he sent out a tweet when Trump got shot. I mean, that just, I'm sorry, that bugs me, you

40:15 know, but

40:18 number two on this, one of the attacks is gonna be, he's not qualified to be president. 'Cause he's too young. 'Cause he's, well, too young and experienced. And I

40:31 agree with that, It's a little disingenuous to make that argument when Barack Obama was your presidential candidate, 'cause let's do a little bit of math here. Community organizer, state senator,

40:49 I believe just one term as a state senator, two years as a US senator when he declared for president. So that's Barack Obama is prepared to be president, everyone rallied around it JD Vance,

41:06 military service, which I'm gonna say far outweighs community organizer and state senate. So military service, saw combat duty, business career, and at least face the voters and has been serving

41:24 as a senator. It's kind of hard to, to to sit there and say, oh yeah, this guy's clearly qualified and this guy's not. That to me is a bit of a push and the like. And a bootstrap story, I think,

41:41 at least in this generation. To Barack Obama's credit, he had that one too. Yeah, but the circumstances from birth were very different, yeah. But anyway, so yeah, no, it'll be interesting to

41:56 see how that plays out I'm actually really looking forward to Trump's speech 'cause at least his talk has been, I wrote the best speech ever. It was gonna be bombastic, blah, blah, blah. I've

42:09 torn it up. And he's gonna talk about unity. 'Cause if, I mean, I've always said about Trump, if he could ever just reach out to the other side and look presidential and realize you, and when

42:22 oilfield Rando and I were texting each other back and forth during the debate, I kept saying he looks so. Trump looks so petty that he keeps going back to the last argument, you know? This was

42:35 back in 2018. I have a friend from childhood who is as kind of diehard rock rib conservative and MAGA as it gets. It was up in Dallas, Fort Worth or sitting in a baseball game and there was some

42:52 just kind of dust up that Trump was making worse because of the messaging I think primarily on Twitter. And I said to my friend,

43:04 has he ever had a presidential moment in his life? And he said, what the hell does

43:13 that matter? Yeah, that's right. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out 'cause if you, we've talked enough about this on BDE. In general, you want a Republican president in there for

43:26 your ability to operate. as an industry that also leads to more production, which leads to lower price. And you want, if you want higher prices, put a die-hard

43:40 Democrat in there 'cause you can't do anything when they're in there. So one update on the center point story. I don't know if you saw this. Tony Busby, who represented the plaintiffs against

43:51 Deshaun Watson. Yeah. Well known Houston attorney has a cohort of restaurant owners who are filing a class action lawsuit against center point. Yeah. And that'll be interesting 'cause I've hung

44:05 out with Busby a couple of times 'cause he and Lee Majors are big friends. See, I just worked that in effortlessly. As Maxine used to say in the Chronicle, the soft thought of name dropping, what

44:18 bam! But anyway, I actually like him. You know, speaking of, he's a former military guy He was a Marine and stuff. I would not want he's on the board. Yeah. I would not want to mess with that

44:32 dude if I was center point. So, all righty. See you tomorrow.

44:40 All right. Thanks, everybody for tuning in. Sorry, we're broadging you with podcast this week, but there's just so much to catch up on. We may shoot even out another one this week. And if you

44:51 enjoyed the podcast, share it with somebody, subscribe to it. Peace out.